[scarface74]

Are you going to also train staff to use the new open source software? Where is the open source SalesForce equivalent? Workday? Concur? Device management? Email service? ServiceNow? Time tracking? Photoshop? Are you going to also force every employee to use Linux instead of Mac and Windows? Are you going to tell them to rewrite all of their software and business processes written on top of Oracle and SQL Server? Should they also rewrite all of their bespoke mobile apps to support open source mobile operating systems? Are you going to migrate all of their Office documents and SharePoint? Are they going to move all of their project management processes from Microsoft Azure DevOps (aka Visual Studio Online)? Are they going to move all of their call center software to open source? For school systems are they going to move their fuel procurement software? Many education systems are partially funded by the lottery. Are they going to move their backend systems from GTech? Their lunch programs payment systems for students use a third party, are they going to move that too? Their ATS? LMS? Grade tracking software?

[Dylan16807]

How long have they been using each one of those products on average? How about migrating off at the same speed?

[scarface74]

So let’s take the lottery systems. Most states including mine has been using the same back end for the lottery since 1991. Who is going to write the replacement? Who is going to audit it? How much is it going to cost to replace literally thousand of lottery terminals? And what benefit would it be?

I can’t think of the name of the company now. But there is one company that manage the school lunch programs. Who is going to write the software and you have to replace all of the hardware throughout the state.

[Dylan16807]

So put systems like that at the end of the list?

And they'll require renegotiation or hardware upgrades at some point, so use that as leverage to say no government entities will buy any more unless they meet certain rules about open sourcing and data storage.

But really, if a handful of things like that were the only examples that would be wonderful.

[scarface74]

So what goes at the beginning of their list and who is going to develop and maintain the equivalent open source software?

[Dylan16807]

> So what goes at the beginning of their list and who is going to develop and maintain the equivalent open source software?

The beginning is any SaaS that started being used in the last 2-3 years. The immediate solution might just be going back to what they had before, if the top priority is privacy.

As far as open source, the existing companies could often be contracted, but if they don't want to open up then the government can put out bids or build a team. If entire countries want to buy something, they can make a market. And that's assuming there isn't already open source software that can do the job, because there often will be.

[scarface74]

So now you want the government to “build a team” of competent software engineers and the government is going to have to compete with the private sector for talent. The average enterprise framework developer in the US costs at least 3 times as much as the average teacher.

Now on the other hand, return offers for interns at my BigTech company is around $150K. The average salary for the superintendent of schools for larger cities is $167K. Where is the government going to get the money to compete with the private sector?

[abarwick]

Simply training government workers to use open source tools would shut down governments for weeks.

[mensetmanusman]

Then this is a good argument to help convince Republicans to get on board.